We assessed whether an artifact’s design can facilitate recognition of abstract causal rules. In Experiment 1, 152 three-year-olds were presented with evidence consistent with a relational rule (i.e., pairs of same or different blocks activated a machine) using two differently designed machines. In the standard-design condition, blocks were placed on top of the machine; in the relational-design condition, blocks were placed into openings on either side. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether this design cue could facilitate adults’ (N = 102) inference of a distinct conjunctive cause (i.e., that two blocks together activate the machine). Results of both experiments demonstrated that causal inference is sensitive to an artifact’s design: Participants in the relational-design conditions were more likely to infer rules that were a priori unlikely. Our findings suggest that reasoning failures may result from difficulty generating the relevant rules as cognitive hypotheses but that artifact design aids causal inference. These findings have clear implications for creating intuitive learning environments.

中文翻译：

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设计驱动因果学习中的发现

我们评估了人工制品的设计是否有助于识别抽象的因果规则。在实验 1 中，使用两台不同设计的机器向 152 名三岁儿童展示了符合关系规则的证据（即，相同或不同的块对激活了一台机器）。在标准设计条件下，砌块放置在机器顶部；在关系设计条件下，块被放置在两侧的开口中。在实验 2 中，我们评估了这种设计提示是否可以促进成人（N = 102）对不同联合原因的推断（即，两个块一起激活机器）。两个实验的结果都表明，因果推断对工件的设计很敏感：处于关系设计条件下的参与者更有可能推断出先验不可能的规则。我们的研究结果表明，推理失败可能是由于难以生成相关规则作为认知假设，但工件设计有助于因果推理。这些发现对于创建直观的学习环境具有明显的意义。